The Bench had in May stayed the High Court's decision to declare the Act unconstitutional.

Madrasas/madarsas refer to institutions where Islamic studies and other education may be pursued by students.

The Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004 had defined Madarsa-education as including education in Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Islamic-studies, philosophy and other branches of learning as may be specified by the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education.

The stated object of the 2004 Act was to empower the Madarsa Education Board by overseeing the functioning of madrasas.

The Act was challenged on the ground that it goes against the principle of secularism.

It was also argued that it fails to provide quality compulsory education up to the age of 14 years/Class-VIII, as is mandatorily required to be provided under Article 21A of the Constitution of India.

It was further contended that it fails to provide universal and quality school education to all the children studying in madarsas, as is mandatorily required to be provided under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

Thus, it violates the fundamental rights of the students of the madrasas.

The High Court had agreed with the petitioners and held that the State has sufficient power to frame laws with regard to education to be provided at school level but such education has to be secular in nature.

"The State has no power to create a Board for religious education or to establish Board for school education only for a particular religion and philosophy associated with it. Any such action on part of State violates the principles of secularism, which is in the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India. The same also violates Article 14 of the Constitution of India, which provides for equal treatment to every person by the State," the High Court held.

Further, it was held that education under the Madarsa Act was not equivalent to the education being imparted to the students of other regular educational institutions recognized by the State Primary and High School and Intermediate Boards and, therefore, the educations being imparted in Madarsas was neither ‘quality’ nor ‘universal’ in nature.

While the students of all other religions are getting educated in all modern subjects, denial of the same quality by the Madarsa Board amounts to violation of both Article 21A as well as Article 21 of the Constitution of India, the High Court said.

Pertinently, the High Court held that the Act framing laws to regulate higher education is a field reserved for the Central government and State Government has no power to legislate in the said field.

However, Madarsa Act confers power on the Board to prescribe course of instructions, text-books, other books and instructional material even for Alim, i.e. under-graduate course, Kamil i.e. postgraduate course, Fazil, i.e. Junior research Programme and other courses.

Hence, the Act is violative of the provision contained in Article 246 (1) of the Constitution which confers powers on parliament to legislate on subjects enumerated in the Union list, the High Court held.

This led to the appeal before the Supreme Court.

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